Industrially operated facilities, such as production facilities, hospitals, airports or large municipal authorities usually concentrate on their core area of competence, for example the production process or the service provision process, with the aim of improving the quality of the products or services, reducing the production costs thereof and so on. The energy needed for this purpose is provided by one or more secondary processes outside the core area of competence and primarily represents a cost factor for the facility. However, this can make up a considerable part of the operating costs of the industrially operated facility. In addition to electricity and fossil fuels (gas, oil), water consumption, for example, (for example for steam generation) also represents such a cost factor.
Owing to rising energy prices, the increased pressure on costs arising from competition and, not least, owing to the implementation of the Kyoto protocol and the laws derived from this, measures for reducing the energy costs per item produced or per service unit are increasingly necessary and of interest to the industrially operated facilities. For this reason, various solutions have already been developed for increasing the energy efficiency and reducing energy costs. Various energy service companies offer their services for the development, implementation and financing of projects for increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy costs.
A method and a system for optimizing and managing the consumption of electrical energy in industrial facilities is disclosed, for example, by EP 0 803 956 B 1. In this case, the total consumption and the consumption of each specific consumer are measured for an operating sequence and, from this, the connection or disconnection of individual consumers during the operating sequence is determined.
US 2002/0035496 A1 discloses a method and a system for implementing and financing energy-saving measures by an energy service company on the premises of a customer.
In addition, a large number of individual measures for saving energy in ventilation and air-conditioning systems, in the area of lighting and in electric drives are known.